Er what? You are going off some pretty old information on this. While it is true we won't know what kind of clocks to expect they aren't being produced on "16 or 20nm."

AMD is using Samsung's 14nm process. They started sharing resources (Global Foundries and Samsung) with them back in 2014. They are (for once) ahead of schedule, and by what they showed off at CES, significantly.

For those asking about when to buy AMD stock. Now is the time. Generally anytime it's below a dollar a share. But this year especially since as of 2nd quarter, AMD will be releasing a ton of new product all the way through September. Even if it is underwhelming, it is revenue sources they haven't had in two to three years.

Even better. I really hoping they hit the high 3GHz with >95 watts quad/octo and Haswell IPC

30 percent slower will ensure that AMD fails. Business's tend to stay with what's they already have or what is the market leader because in the grand scheme of things, hardware is a smaller cost compared to software and labour. Consumers at the moment tend to stay away from AMD because AMD has been inferior for CPU's far too long. Initial zen is high end only and these products are for enthusiasts.

Particularly because high end zen launches first and this is the group is the least price sensitive, being cheaper won't be enough when it is that much of a difference. In addition, the CPU is just one component in a system In a computer, a CPU costing 100-200 dollars higher in the overall price of the system in the highend, adds only 15-5% more cost to the system. What this means is that most enthusiasts can cough up the money to buy intel if it means double digits difference in performance.

What AMD can do however is clock their cards high and leave less headroom in the cards. I think this is what AMD is planning because of the new cooler. For product launches, reviews are everything. I think AMD is willing to take a performance per watt hit in the high end and I think it would be the right choice since enthusiasts care less about power consumption(enthusiastic care more about noise). If AMD is willing to put out a 200 watt product and target it against intels 130 watt products, I think AMD can get within single digits difference in performance.

I think 30% slower is a bit too pessimistic for a Jim Keller arch.

Before the Samsung deal, when we had no idea how AMD was going to refresh all their products in 2016 AND get out a new architecture (remember there were rumors they were going to have to settle for 16nm with Zen) in the same year, I'd have agreed.

Since then though things have changed. Significantly. They made a point to say that the 40% IPC boost of Zen was "regardless of node size." They also made a point to clarify that Zen is 40% faster than Excavator, not Bulldozer. Which certainly makes the 40% far more ambitious than it originally seemed. Well now that we know Zen is going to be on the best possible node, all bets are off till we get some actual performance leaks.

Regardless, this Samsung deal has two major implications for AMD going forward that far too many people here seem to be overlooking, and I'd like to discuss them below...

#1) They are on 14nm now. So effectively, they are tied with Intel on process in one fell swoop (yes I am aware of the differences between Intel, TSMC's, and Samsung's process, however you are not taking into account that Samsung has been preparing for this since 2014). There is an article from 2014 everyone on here seems to have missed about "Global Foundries and Samsung Factories Sharing Resources to produce 14nm products."

Well that deal was from April of 2014 to be exact. So it is safe to assume that Samsung has been preparing their factories, and upgrading their 14nm process to receive x86 GPU's and CPU's from AMD for two years now. This is not Samsung jumping into x86 with little to no warning, or simply porting these products to their cellphone nodes. They have had time to upgrade and refine their process for these architectures. So Samsung's node is likely a lot closer to Intel's and TSMC's node than we have been led to believe.

Also the fact that Samsung scooped up Jim Keller the moment he finished Zen and left AMD may also be a factor here. Either way though, this has likely been a long time coming. I mean, remember as far back as 2014 when AMD was swearing up and down all of this stuff was gonna be 14nm AND releasing in the same year? We all thought they were nuts, and had no idea how they were even gonna get the factory time at TSMC to make just the GPU's happen in 2016, let alone everything else. Well, I think it's pretty obvious now that AMD and Samsung were working on it back then, and had actually been making a lot of progress.

On top of that they have enough resources to share with AMD that they are not only on time, but if their CES performance is to be believed (showing working low power and high end GPUS to the press), they are actually AHEAD of schedule. Yes, you read that right. AMD in 2016 is apparently AHEAD of schedule on manufacturing something.

#2) Samsung is aggressively trying to get to 10nm. As in, they are saying it will happen by the beginning of 2017. For those not keeping track, that is well ahead of Intel's projections after a few delays.

Well, AMD has Zen+ due out in 2017 as well. The implication here that no one seems to be discussing from this Samsung deal, is that in two generations, AMD has a chance not just to get close to Intel in performance, but to actually beat them to a process node. Yes, AMD has a shot at beating Intel to 10nm.
The same AMD that's been stuck on 28 and 32nm for Five years. The same AMD, who even this year is going to be releasing a 28nm CPU (which we know is literally twice the size of Intel's current die), could technically beat Intel to 10nm by mid to late 2017.

Think about that for a second. If you even tried to say something that absurd even back in November, you would have have been laughed off this site. Now it actually could happen.

Anyway, a lot of misinformation going around this thread I'm trying to clear up here. So to Summarize quickly.

- AMD has a deal in place for high priority in Samsung Factories in regards to manufacturing their future GPU's, CPU's, and APU's.-
- AMD is (for once) actually ahead of schedule.-
- AMD is ahead of schedule because Global Foundries and Samsung have been preparing for these products since April of 2014.-
- AMD showed off two GPU's, one low power offering and one high end offering at CES this year, just to prove how far ahead they actually are. For comparison, Nvidia had nothing to show or counter them with. Read into that what you will, but I will point out that it is very unNvidia like for them to not have a response to such a challenge.-
- All AMD products are destined for Samsung's 14nm process.-
- AMD 14nm GPU's, AM4 Motherboards, and a 28nm Excavator desktop chip are all going to launch by 2nd quarter 2016.-
- AMD 14nm Zen chips are going to launch by end of 3rd quarter beginning of 4th quarter 2016.-
- AMD Zen+ has a shot to beat Intel to 10nm because Samsung is projecting 10nm by beginning of 2017.-
- Finally, no matter how the launches go, this is the first year in forever, where AMD will have a full product catalog available all in one go. So no matter what, between, AM4, GPU's, CPU's, APU's, The two console refreshes, and Nintendo's new system, their revenue is going to increase. The question is only, how by how much.-

Realistically, the only chance AMD and RTG have to leapfrog Intel and Nvidia respectively, would be if the latter two would stumble and make mistakes like how it was with Netburst (Pentium 4), GeForce FX (NV30) and the GeForce 400 Series (Fermi) where AMD/ATi were able to capitalize by improving proven architectures to compete against them.

Intel has been very conservative and their IPC improvements have been done in small increments in the last half-decade so I'm guessing that would be an opportunity for AMD to at least catch-up on the CPU front.

I would recon that Nvidia are working hard on Pascal to maintain the competitive position of the company to protect their market share advantage. They will not make it easy for RTG to beat them with Polaris.

Realistically, the only chance AMD and RTG have to leapfrog Intel and Nvidia respectively, would be if the latter two would stumble and make mistakes like how it was with Netburst (Pentium 4), GeForce FX (NV30) and the GeForce 400 Series (Fermi) where AMD/ATi were able to capitalize by improving proven architectures to compete against them.

Intel has been very conservative and their IPC improvements have been done in small increments in the last half-decade so I'm guessing that would be an opportunity for AMD to at least catch-up on the CPU front.

I would recon that Nvidia are working hard on Pascal to maintain the competitive position of the company to protect their market share advantage. They will not make it easy for RTG to beat them with Polaris.

I am not sure about Nvidia, with the way they response to AMD/RTG, they are pretty much max out what they can do. Maxwell is done in a way that Nvidia remove a lot of compute stuff to be efficient. If Nvidia have a lot of things under their belt, they wouldnt be need to remove those components.

The real mystery is Intel. With so much R&D on hands I find it hard to believe they only extract 5% each generation. Not to mention that Intel has been devoting all the TDP to GPU. If they start focusing back the the CPU, u'll see a miracle improvement again.

IMO, Zen have no place to complete Intel with what so ever. Radeon? They could very well be neck to neck with Nvidia with the price of higher power usage.

AMD should have start making super APU kill Discrete card market from the bottom up if they really want to complete. Since both Intel & Nvidia doesnt have both things good. if people can pay $500-600 on a GPU, $300 on CPU, I dont see why they wont pay $900-1000 on just APU

Realistically, the only chance AMD and RTG have to leapfrog Intel and Nvidia respectively, would be if the latter two would stumble and make mistakes like how it was with Netburst (Pentium 4), GeForce FX (NV30) and the GeForce 400 Series (Fermi) where AMD/ATi were able to capitalize by improving proven architectures to compete against them.

Intel has been very conservative and their IPC improvements have been done in small increments in the last half-decade so I'm guessing that would be an opportunity for AMD to at least catch-up on the CPU front.

I would recon that Nvidia are working hard on Pascal to maintain the competitive position of the company to protect their market share advantage. They will not make it easy for RTG to beat them with Polaris.

you make two assumptions i disagree with.

1. that improvement over previous products is linear.

2. that the competitors have to "mess up" to lose their advantage

Product improvement revolves around company IP. They could have a "A-Ha moment" and release something significantly faster than current competitors. Which would tie into the 2nd assumption you made, that a company doesn't necessarily have to "mess up" they just could just lack the needed IP to remain competitive. We have seen many computer companies go under, and new ones rise in their place. It's entirely possible in this industry to leapfrog others because you have a better solution to a problem than your competitors.

I'm not going to try and hype AMD here, but there is an off chance this could be the case with them.

Even if Polaris and Zen are good products I doubt it will matter anymore.

Intel will just force their chips down the OEM's throats like they try to do when countering ARM in mobile space. Your "local" PC guy will still build Intel builds when someone asks for them to do it. "AMD drivers suck" is still a thing.

Even if Polaris and Zen are good products I doubt it will matter anymore.

Intel will just force their chips down the OEM's throats like they try to do when countering ARM in mobile space. Your "local" PC guy will still build Intel builds when someone asks for them to do it. "AMD drivers suck" is still a thing.

But I hope I'm wrong.

Agreed, people act as if AMD has never competed/had better products than NV/Intel before.. Even when their GPU's and CPU's have been better, they still didn't sell as well. Not to mention some dirty practices and tactics used by the competition, and as you said, the stigma AMD has made for themselves is going to be hard to shake off.

You never know though, with how connected the world is today, and the knowledge of consumers is far higher than before, it makes it easy for a comeback, but equally easy for a mistake to be disastrous. We need some good competition for Intel, i want a Sandybridge release every other year, it's funny that i'm still good to go with a 5 year old CPU..

AMD should have start making super APU kill Discrete card market from the bottom up if they really want to complete. Since both Intel & Nvidia doesnt have both things good. if people can pay $500-600 on a GPU, $300 on CPU, I dont see why they wont pay $900-1000 on just APU

Because people upgrade GPU's more often than CPU's. And memory bandwidth n stuff.

What they might come up with would be a dual socket form factor with "GPU" socket close to "CPU" socket but that would be also damn hard thing to sell. With such TDP's so close to each other it would make a watercooling a must. Might have some advantages if HSA takes off one day and there is 8 GB of RAM sitting on 1024 bit bus adjacent to the CPU socket.